Yep, EverQuest Next is no more. Well, actually, it will never be.
Why?
Apparently, "It Wasn't Fun"
Daybreak Games made the announcement on their website today. Who's Daybreak Games? It's the former Sony Online Entertainment. Yes, EverQuest has gone through many hands.
Here's the relevant part of the announcement:
For those familiar with the internals of game development, you know that cancellations are a reality we must face from time to time. Inherent to the creative process are dreaming big, pushing hard and being brutally honest with where you land. In the case of EverQuest Next, we accomplished incredible feats that astonished industry insiders. Unfortunately, as we put together the pieces, we found that it wasn’t fun. We know you have high standards when it comes to Norrath and we do too. In final review, we had to face the fact that EverQuest Next would not meet the expectations we – and all of you – have for the worlds of Norrath.Ah well. There goes one potential time sink in my retirement. I guess I'll just have to be more productive or something.
I'm a little skeptical of that reasoning. I think that the market for high production value MMOs has gone to pot. I don't think EQ Landmark has done very well either, which hurt the development of the MMO.
ReplyDeleteThey've been talking about EQ:N for years and years and years. I remember hearing about it when I was playing the first everquest.
ReplyDeleteThey have been talking about it for years but only after EverQuest 2 never seemed to really hit the market. Back during the EQ days EQ2 was always the thing. When I last visited the studio back in 2004, their big thing was going to be a modern combat MMO.
DeleteModern Combat? Didn't Battlefield already try this? I believe they have battlefield 4 free, which is basically on online free MMO type deal.
DeleteNow they can license out the Everquest IP to Perfect World Entertainment and we'll have a freemium nightmare ready to experience in 12 months.
ReplyDeleteEverQuest Next was always going to be F2P.
DeleteOh, I wasn't suggesting otherwise, more just mocking the fact that Korean devs like PW's studios could knock of a highly monetized version of the IP in far less time than it took ex-Sony devs to admit they were lost.
DeleteI remember a certain other game getting to the end of the development cycle and finding their game wasn't fun. What did they? Roll up their sleeves and get working on making it fun. A year later they released "Half Life"
ReplyDelete